Algonquin Books Fall 2023 Preview
Fall Reading from Algonquin Books
Pockets "showcases the best features of cultural history: a lively combination of visual, literary and documentary evidence. As sumptuously illustrated as it is learned … this highly inventive and original book demands a pocket sequel.” ―Jane Kamensky, Wall Street Journal
Who gets pockets, and why?
It’s a subject that stirs up plenty of passion: Why do men’s clothes have so many pockets and women’s so few? And why are the pockets on women’s clothes often too small to fit phones, if they even open at all? In her captivating book, Hannah Carlson, a lecturer in dress history at the Rhode Island School of Design, reveals the issues of gender politics, security, sexuality, power, and privilege tucked inside our pockets.
Throughout the medieval era in Europe, the purse was an almost universal dress feature. But when tailors stitched the first pockets into men’s trousers five hundred years ago, it ignited controversy and introduced a range of social issues that we continue to wrestle with today, from concealed pistols to gender inequality. See: #GiveMePocketsOrGiveMeDeath.
Filled with incredible images, this microhistory of the humble pocket uncovers what pockets tell us about ourselves: How is it that putting your hands in your pockets can be seen as a sign of laziness, arrogance, confidence, or perversion? Walt Whitman’s author photograph, hand in pocket, for Leaves of Grass seemed like an affront to middle-class respectability. When W.E.B. Du Bois posed for a portrait, his pocketed hands signaled defiant coolness.
And what else might be hiding in the history of our pockets? (There’s a reason that the contents of Abraham Lincoln’s pockets are the most popular exhibit at the Library of Congress.) Thinking about the future, Carlson asks whether we will still want pockets when our clothes contain “smart” textiles that incorporate our IDs and credit cards.
Pockets is for the legions of people obsessed with pockets and their absence, and for anyone interested in how our clothes influence the way we navigate the world.
From bestselling author of The Book of Delights and award-winning poet, a book of lyrical mini-essays celebrating the everyday that will inspire readers to rediscover the joys in the world around us.
In Ross Gay’s new collection of small, daily wonders, again written over the course of a year, one of America’s most original voices continues his ongoing investigation of delight.
For Gay, what delights us is what connects us, what gives us meaning, from the joy of hearing a nostalgic song blasting from a passing car to the pleasure of refusing the “nefarious” scannable QR code menus, from the tiny dog he fell hard for to his mother baking a dozen kinds of cookies for her grandchildren. As always, Gay revels in the natural world—sweet potatoes being harvested, a hummingbird carousing in the beebalm, a sunflower growing out of a wall around the cemetery, the shared bounty from a neighbor’s fig tree—and the trillion mysterious ways this glorious earth delights us.
The Book of (More) Delights is a volume to savor and share.
When Remy Wadia left India for the United States, he carried his resentment of his cold and inscrutable mother with him and has kept his distance from her. Years later, he returns to Bombay, planning to adopt a baby from a young pregnant girl—and to see his elderly mother again before it is too late. She is in the hospital, has stopped talking, and seems to have given up on life.
Struck with guilt for not realizing just how ill she had become, Remy devotes himself to helping her recover and return home. But one day in her apartment he comes upon an old photograph that demands explanation. As shocking family secrets surface, Remy finds himself reevaluating his entire childhood and his relationship to his parents, just as he is on the cusp of becoming a parent himself. Can Remy learn to forgive others for their human frailties, or is he too wedded to his sorrow and anger over his parents’ long-ago decisions?
Surprising, devastating, and ultimately a story of redemption and healing still possible between a mother and son, The Museum of Failures is a tour de force from one of our most elegant storytellers about the mixed bag of love and regret. It is also, above all, a much-needed reminder that forgiveness comes from empathy for others.
Fancy Feast draws back the curtain to reveal a world that most denizens of the daytime never see. Part exclusive backstage pass, part long-form literary striptease, these essays confront our culture’s tightly held beliefs—like so many clutched pearls—about sex, communication, power, and the messiness of life on the margins of respectability. In “Dildo Lady,” Fancy recounts her time compensating for the failures of the American sex education system while working retail at a sex toy store. In “Doing Yourself,” Fancy tackles fatphobia and dating, self-love, and fantasies. In “Yes/No/Maybe,” Fancy brings the reader from sex parties to polyamorous relationships as she contrasts the undeniable sexiness of enthusiastic consent with the devastating effects of miscommunication and entitlement.
Fancy Feast does this all as a fat woman who makes a living taking off her clothes—a triumphant punch-back at a culture that wants fat people to be self-hating or sexless. For fans of Lindy West and Melissa Febos, Naked is by turns splashy, vulnerable, and always powerful.
What if?
What if Sean Courtland’s old Chevy truck had broken down somewhere else? What if he’d never met Denise Givens, a waitress at a local tavern, and gotten into a bar fight defending her honor? Or offered a ride to Dan Young, another young man like Sean, burdened by secrets and just drifting through the small Wisconsin town?
Instead, Sean enlists Dan’s help with a construction job in the basement of a local—the elderly, reclusive Marion Devereaux—and gradually the two men come to realize that they’ve washed up in a place haunted by the disappearance of three young boys decades earlier. As Sean and Dan’s friendship deepens, and as Sean gets closer to Denise and her father, they come to the attention of a savvy local detective, Corrine Viegas, who has her own reasons for digging into Dan’s past—and for being unable to resist the pull of the town’s unsolved mystery. And with each chance connection, an irreversible chain of events is set in motion that culminates in shattering violence and the revelation of long-buried truths.
Gripping and immersive, this crime novel by bestselling author Tim Johnston becomes so much more: a book about friendship and love and good hard work—and a masterful read about how the most random intersection of lives can have consequences both devastating and beautiful.
This biting, brilliant, often hilarious guide to socialism by journalist Malaika Jabali debunks myths, centers forgotten socialists of color who have shaped our world, and shows socialism is not all Marx and Bernie Bros—it's time for all of us to ditch capitalism and try something finer.
We’ve all dated someone who took control of the relationship—you know, someone who makes you feel like you’re unhappy because you’re just not putting in the work, or it’s all in your head. But when you think about trying to meet new people, it feels terrifying. Like, have you looked at Tinder recently? It’s rough out there!
Your tough-love new best friend, award-winning journalist, policy attorney, and life-long socialist Malaika Jabali is here to say: we are all in a generations-long toxic relationship with Capitalism, and it is time to get the h*ll out of there and move ALONG.
She gives you everything you need to know about what a healthy relationship could actually look like, issue by issue—from healthcare and housing to the whole concept of American democracy—with our new boo: Socialism. And no, Socialism isn’t the boring, grey, authoritarian, Cold-War-era monster that you’ve heard about.
With accessible explanations and illustrations, often surprising graphs and stats, and some Drake memes, this book will show you that we NEED to build a world that’s safer, kinder, cleaner, healthier, and more equal. And that this isn’t a utopian dream – it’s within our grasp, if we collectively decide to call out Capitalism for what it really is and wake up to a better future.
Carter is a young mother on a quest to find the true meaning of her heritage, which she only learned of in her teens. Allie is trying to make up for the lost years with her first born and to protect Carter from the hurt she herself suffered from her own mother. Lucie wants the granddaughter she's never met to help her get to her ancestors in the afterlife. And Geneviève is determined to conquer her demons—before the fire inside burns her up—with the help of the sister she lost but has never been without. Meanwhile, Mamé, in the afterlife, knows that all their stories began with her; she must find a way to cut herself from the last threads that keep her tethered to the living, just as they must find their own paths forward. And a young bison wants to understand why he keeps being moved and whether he should make a break for it and run for his life.
This extraordinary novel, told by a chorus of vividly realized, wise, confused, struggling characters attempting to make sense of this life and the next, heralds the arrival of a stunning new voice in literary fiction.
An abandoned restaurant on a hill off the highway in Western Massachusetts doesn’t look like much. But to Rio, a young Black woman bereft after the loss of her newborn child, this hill becomes more than a safe haven—it becomes a place to start over. She convinces her husband to help her construct a society underground, somewhere everyone can feel safe, loved, and accepted.
Soon their utopia begins to take shape and attracts the unhoused, the disillusioned, and the spiritually lost. But no matter how much these people all yearn for a sanctuary from the existential dread of life above the surface, what happens if this new society can’t actually work?
From an exciting new literary voice, The New Naturals is fresh and deeply perceptive, capturing the absurdity of life in the 21st century. In this remarkable feat of imagination, Bump shows us that, ultimately, it is our love for and connection to each other that will save us.
**A 2023 NEW YORK TIMES and WASHINGTON POST Notable Book and a BOSTON GLOBE Best Book of the Year**
On a November day in 1940, Adam Paskow becomes a prisoner in the Warsaw Ghetto, where the Jews of the city are cut off from their former lives and held captive by Nazi guards to await an uncertain fate. Weeks later, he is approached by a mysterious figure with a surprising request: Would he join a secret group of archivists working to preserve the truth of what is happening inside these walls?
Adam agrees and begins taking testimonies from his students, friends, and neighbors. One of the people Adam interviews is his flatmate Sala Wiskoff, who is stoic, determined, and funny—and married with two children. Over the months of their confinement, in the presence of her family, they fall in love. But when Adam discovers a possible escape from the Ghetto, he is faced with an unbearable choice: whom can he save, and at what cost ?
Inspired by the testimony-gathering project with the code name Oneg Shabbat, and told with immediacy and heart, We Must Not Think of Ourselves is a piercing story of love, determination, and sacrifice.
Sunday Forrester lives with her sixteen-year-old daughter, Dolly, in the house she grew up in. She does things more carefully than most people. On quiet days, she must eat only white foods. Her etiquette handbook guides her through confusing social situations, and to escape, she turns to her treasury of Sicilian folklore. The one thing very much out of her control is clever headstrong Dolly, now on the cusp of leaving home.
Into this carefully ordered world step Vita and Rollo, a couple who move in next door, disarm Sunday with their glamor and charm, and proceed to deliciously break just about every rule in Sunday’s book. Soon they are in and out of each others’ homes, and Sunday feels loved and accepted like never before. But beneath Vita and Rollo’s polish lies something else, something darker. For Sunday has precisely what Vita has always wanted for herself: a daughter of her own.
An astute and poignant psychological portrait of a woman coming to terms with what love means, and why discovering our own unique gifts can save us.
In the early 1970s, in Stovall, Texas, seventeen-year-old Earl—a loner, a dreamer, a lover of music and words—meets and is quickly infatuated with Tina, the new girl in town. She convinces Earl to drive her to see her mother in Austin, where, after a hazy night of partying, Earl and Tina are separated. Two days later, Earl is being questioned by the police about Tina’s disappearance and the blood in the trunk of his car. But Earl can’t remember what happened in Austin, and with little support from his working-class family, he is sentenced for a crime he did not commit.
Forty years later, Earl is released into an America so changed he can barely navigate it. Determined to have the life that was taken from him, he settles in a small town on the Oregon coast and works to overcome the emotional toll of incarceration. But just as Earl finds a chance to begin again, his past returns to endanger the new life he’s built.
Steeped in the music and atmosphere of the 1970s, I Am the Light of This World is a gritty, gripping, and gorgeously written story of the impulsive choices of youth, redemption, mercy, and the power of the imagination.
An NPR Best Book of 2022 and Winner of a Nautilus Silver Book Award
“Stirring and unforgettable—a breathtaking adoption saga like no other.” —Robert Kolker, New York Times-bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road and Lost Girls
It was 1998 in Nha Trang, Việt Nam, and Liên struggled to care for her newborn twin girls. Hà was taken in by Liên’s sister, and she grew up in a rural village with her aunt, going to school and playing outside with the neighbors. They had sporadic electricity and frequent monsoons. Hà’s twin sister, Loan, was adopted by a wealthy, white American family who renamed her Isabella. Isabella grew up in the suburbs of Chicago with a nonbiological sister, Olivia, also adopted from Việt Nam. Isabella and Olivia attended a predominantly white Catholic school, played soccer, and prepared for college.
But when Isabella’s adoptive mother learned of her biological twin back in Việt Nam, all of their lives changed forever. Award-winning journalist Erika Hayasaki spent years and hundreds of hours interviewing each of the birth and adoptive family members. She brings the girls’ experiences to life on the page, told from their own perspectives, challenging conceptions about adoption and what it means to give a child a good life.
“My entire life I have been less fat and more fat, but never not fat,” writes Rabia Chaudry, who was raised with a lot of love. And that love looked like food. Delicious Pakistani dishes—fresh roti, chaat, pakoras, and shorba—and also Pizza Hut, Dairy Queen, and an abundance of American processed foods, as her family discovered its adopted country through its (fast) food. In Fatty Fatty Boom Boom, Chaudry chronicles the dozens of times she tried and failed to achieve what she was told was her ideal weight. The truth is, she always loved food too much to hold a grudge against it.
This memoir is at once an ode to Pakistani cuisine, including Chaudry’s favorite recipes; a love letter to her Muslim family, both here and in Lahore; and a courageously honest portrait of a woman making peace with a body that gets the job done but refuses to meet the expectations of others.
It’s 1957, and after leaving the only home she has ever known, Alice Young steps off the bus into all-Black New Jessup, where residents have largely rejected integration as the means for Black social advancement. Instead, they seek to maintain, and fortify, the community they cherish on their “side of the woods.” In this place, Alice falls in love with Raymond Campbell, whose clandestine organizing activities challenge New Jessup’s longstanding status quo and could lead to the young couple’s expulsion—or worse—from the home they each hold dear. As they marry and raise children together, Alice must find a way to balance her undying support for Raymond’s underground work with her desire to protect New Jessup from the rising pressure of upheaval from inside, and outside, their side of town.
Based on the history of the many Black towns and settlements established across the country, Jamila Minnicks’s heartfelt and riveting debut is both a timely examination of the opposing viewpoints that attended desegregation in America and a celebration of Black joy.
One day at work, Dawn discovers something hidden under the endpapers of an old book: the torn-off corner of a 1950s lesbian pulp novel, with an illustration of a woman looking into a mirror and seeing a man’s face. Even more intriguing is the queer love letter written on the back. Dawn becomes obsessed with tracking down the author of the letter, convinced the mysterious writer can help her find a place in the world and also solve the trickiest puzzle of all: how she truly wants to live her life.
A sharply written, evocative debut, Endpapers is both a page-turning bookish mystery and an unforgettable story about the journey toward authenticity and the hard conversations we owe ourselves in pursuit of a world where no one has to hide.
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